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exposure to the wildest winter night. For two-and-fifty years he
was the subject of a supernatural palpitation, which kept his bed
and chair, and everything moveable about him, in a perpetual
tremble. For that space of time his breast was miraculously
swollen to the thickness of a fist above his heart. On a post-
mortem examination of the holy corpse, it was found that two of
the ribs had been broken, to allow the sacred ardour of his heart
more room to play! The doctors swore solemnly that the
phenomenon could be nothing less than a miracle. A divine hand
had thus literally ‘enlarged the heart’ of the devotee.[320] St. Philip
enjoyed, with many other saints, the privilege of being
miraculously elevated into the air by the fervour of his
heavenward aspirations. The Acta Sanctorum relates how Ida of
Louvain—seized with an overwhelming desire to present her
gifts with the Wise Men to the child Jesus—received, on the eve
of the Three Kings, the distinguished favour of being permitted to
swell to a terrific size, and then gradually to return to her original
dimensions. On another occasion, she was gratified by being
thrown down in the street in an ecstacy, and enlarging so that her
horror-stricken attendant had to embrace her with all her might to
keep her from bursting. The noses of eminent saints have been
endowed with so subtile a sense that they have detected the
stench of concealed sins, and enjoyed, as a literal fragrance, the
well-known odour of sanctity. St. Philip Neri was frequently
obliged to hold his nose and turn away his head when
confessing very wicked people. In walking the streets of some
depraved Italian town, the poor man must have endured all the
pains of Coleridge in Cologne, where, he says,

‘I counted two-and-seventy stenches,

All well-defined, and several stinks!’

Maria of Oignys received what theurgic mysticism calls the gift of

jubilation. For three days and nights upon the point of death, she
sang without remission her ecstatic swan-song, at the top of a
voice whose hoarseness was miraculously healed. She felt as
though the wing of an angel were spread upon her breast,
thrilling her heart with the rapture, and pouring from her lips the
praises, of the heavenly world. With the melodious modulation of
an inspired recitative, she descanted on the mysteries of the
Trinity and the incarnation—improvised profound expositions of
the Scripture—invoked the saints, and interceded for her friends.
[321]
A nun who visited Catharina Ricci in her ecstasy, saw with
amazement her face transformed into the likeness of the
Redeemer’s countenance. St. Hildegard, in the enjoyment and
description of her visions, and in the utterance of her prophecies,
was inspired with a complete theological terminology hitherto
unknown to mortals. A glossary of the divine tongue was long
preserved among her manuscripts at Wiesbaden.[322] It is
recorded in the life of St. Veronica of Binasco, that she received
the miraculous gift of tears in a measure so copious, that the
spot where she knelt appeared as though a jug of water had
been overset there. She was obliged to have an earthen vessel
ready in her cell to receive the supernatural efflux, which filled it
frequently to the weight of several Milan pounds! Ida of Nivelles,
when in an ecstasy one day, had it revealed to her that a dear
friend was at the same moment in the same condition. The friend
also was simultaneously made aware that Ida was immersed in
the same abyss of divine light with herself. Thenceforward they
were as one soul in the Lord, and the Virgin Mary appeared to
make a third in the saintly fellowship. Ida was frequently enabled
to communicate with spiritual personages, without words, after
the manner of angelic natures. On one occasion, when at a
distance from a priest to whom she was much attached, both she
and the holy man were entranced at the same time; and, when
wrapt to heaven, he beheld her in the presence of Christ, at
whose command she communicated to him, by a spiritual kiss, a
portion of the grace with which she herself had been so richly
endowed. To Clara of Montfaucon allusion has already been
made. In the right side of her heart was found, completely
formed, a little figure of Christ upon the cross, about the size of a
thumb. On the left, under what resembled the bloody cloth, lay
the instruments of the passion—the crown of thorns, the nails,
&c. So sharp was the miniature lance, that the Vicar-General
Berengarius, commissioned to assist at the examination by the
Bishop of Spoleto, pricked therewith his reverend finger. This
marvel was surpassed in the eighteenth century by a miracle
more piquant still. Veronica Giuliani caused a drawing to be
made of the many forms and letters which she declared had
been supernaturally modelled within her heart. To the exultation
of the faithful—and the everlasting confusion of all Jews,
Protestants, and Turks—a post-mortem examination disclosed
the accuracy of her description, to the minutest point. There were
the sacred initials in a large and distinct Roman character, the
crown of thorns, two flames, seven swords, the spear, the reed,
&c.—all arranged just as in the diagram she had furnished.[323]
The diocese of Liège was edified, in the twelfth century, by
seeing, in the person of the celebrated Christina Mirabilis, how
completely the upward tendency of protracted devotion might
vanquish the law of gravitation. So strongly was she drawn away
from this gross earth, that the difficulty was to keep her on the
ground. She was continually flying up to the tops of lonely towers
and trees, there to enjoy a rapture with the angels, and a roost
with the birds. In the frequency, the elevation, and the duration of
her ascents into the air, she surpassed even the high-flown
devotion of St. Peter of Alcantara, who was often seen
suspended high above the fig-trees which overshadowed his
hermitage at Badajos—his eyes upturned, his arms outspread—
while the servant sent to summon him to dinner, gazed with open
mouth, and sublunary cabbage cooled below. The limbs of
Christina lost the rigidity, as her body lost the grossness,
common to vulgar humanity. In her ecstasies she was contracted
into the spherical form—her head was drawn inward and
downward towards her breast, and she rolled up like a
hedgehog. When her relatives wished to take and secure her,
they had to employ a man to hunt her like a bird. Having started
his game, he had a long run across country before he brought
her down, in a very unsportsmanlike manner, by a stroke with his
bludgeon which broke her shin. When a few miracles had been
wrought to vindicate her aërostatic mission, she was allowed to
fly about in peace.[324] She has occupied, ever since, the first
place in the ornithology of Roman-catholic saintship. Such are a
few of the specimens which might be collected in multitudes from
Romanist records, showing how that communion has bestowed
its highest favour on the most coarse and materialised
apprehensions of spiritual truth. Extravagant inventions such as
these—monstrous as the adventures of Baron Münchausen,
without their wit—have been invested with the sanction and
defended by the thunder of the Papal chair. Yet this very Church
of Rome incarcerated Molinos and Madame Guyon as
dangerous enthusiasts.

VI.

Madame Guyon had still some lessons to learn. On a visit to

Paris, the glittering equipages of the park, and the gaieties of St.
Cloud, revived the old love of seeing and being seen. During a
tour in the provinces with her husband, flattering visits and
graceful compliments everywhere followed such beauty, such
accomplishments, and such virtue, with a delicate and
intoxicating applause. Vanity—dormant, but not dead—awoke
within her for the last time. She acknowledged, with bitter self-
reproach, the power of the world, the weakness of her own
resolves. In the spiritual desertion which ensued, she recognised
the displeasure of her Lord, and was wretched. She applied to
confessors—they were miserable comforters, all of them. They
praised her while she herself was filled with self-loathing. She
estimated the magnitude of her sins by the greatness of the
favour which had been shown her. The bland worldliness of her
religious advisers could not blind so true a heart, or pacify so
wakeful a conscience. She found relief only in a repentant
renewal of her self-dedication to the Saviour, in renouncing for
ever the last remnant of confidence in any strength of her own.
It was about this period that she had a remarkable conversation
with a beggar, whom she found upon a bridge, as, followed by
her footman, she was walking one day to church. This singular
mendicant refused her offered alms—spoke to her of God and
divine things—and then of her own state, her devotion, her trials,
and her faults. He declared that God required of her not merely
to labour as others did to secure their salvation, that they might
escape the pains of hell, but to aim at such perfection and purity
in this life, as to escape those of purgatory. She asked him who
he was. He replied, that he had formerly been a beggar, but now
was such no more;—mingled with the stream of people, and she
never saw him afterwards.[325]
The beauty of Madame Guyon had cost her tender conscience
many a pang. She had wept and prayed over that secret love of
display which had repeatedly induced her to mingle with the
thoughtless amusements of the world. At four-and-twenty the
virulence of the small-pox released her from that snare. M.
Guyon was laid up with the gout. She was left, when the disorder
seized her, to the tender mercies of her mother-in-law. That
inhuman woman refused to allow any but her own physician to
attend her, yet for him she would not send. The disease,
unchecked, had reached its height, when a medical man,
passing that way, happened to call at the house. Shocked at the
spectacle Madame Guyon presented, he was proceeding at
once to bleed her, expressing, in no measured terms, his
indignation at the barbarity of such neglect. The mother-in-law
would not hear of such a thing. He performed the operation in
spite of her threats and invectives, leaving her almost beside
herself with rage. That lancet saved the life of Madame Guyon,
and disappointed the relative who had hoped to see her die.
When at length she recovered, she refused to avail herself of the
cosmetics generally used to conceal the ravages of the disorder.
Throughout her suffering she had never uttered a murmur, or felt
a fear. She had even concealed the cruelty of her mother-in-law.
She said, that if God had designed her to retain her beauty, He
would not have sent the scourge to remove it. Her friends
expected to find her inconsolable—they heard her speak only of
thankfulness and joy. Her confessor reproached her with spiritual
pride. The affection of her husband was visibly diminished; yet
the heart of Madame Guyon overflowed with joy. It appeared to
her, that the God to whom she longed to be wholly given up had
accepted her surrender, and was removing everything that might
interpose between Himself and her.[326]

VII.

The experience of Madame Guyon, hitherto, had been such as

to teach her the surrender of every earthly source of gratification
or ground of confidence. Yet one more painful stage on the road
to self-annihilation remained to be traversed. She must learn to
give up cheerfully even spiritual pleasures. In the year 1674,
according to the probable calculation of Mr. Upham, she was
made to enter what she terms a state of desolation, which lasted,
with little intermission, for nearly seven years.[327] All was
emptiness, darkness, sorrow. She describes herself as cast
down, like Nebuchadnezzar, from a throne of enjoyment, to live
among the beasts. ‘Alas!’ she exclaimed, ‘is it possible that this
heart, formerly all on fire, should now become like ice?’ The
heavens were as brass, and shut out her prayers; horror and
trembling took the place of tranquillity; hopelessly oppressed with
guilt, she saw herself a victim destined for hell. In vain for her did
the church doors open, the holy bells ring, the deep-voiced
intonations of the priest arise and fall, the chanted psalm ascend
through clouds of azure wandering incense. The power and the
charm of the service had departed. Of what avail was music to a
burning wilderness athirst for rain? Gladly would she have had
recourse to the vow, to the pilgrimage, to the penance, to any
extremity of self-torture. She felt the impotence of such remedies
for such anguish. She had no ear for comfort, no eye for hope,
not even a voice for complaint.
During this period the emotional element of religion in her mind
appears to have suffered an almost entire suspension.
Regarding the loss of certain feelings of delight as the loss of the
divine favour, she naturally sank deeper and deeper in
despondency. A condition by no means uncommon in ordinary
Christian experience assumed, in her case, a morbid character.
Our emotions may be chilled, or kindled, in ever-varying
degrees, from innumerable causes. We must accustom
ourselves to the habitual performance of duty, whether attended
or not with feelings of a pleasurable nature. It is generally found
that those powerful emotions of joy which attend, at first, the new
and exalting consciousness of peace with God, subside after
awhile. As we grow in religious strength and knowledge, a
steady principle supplies their place. We are refreshed, from time
to time, by seasons of heightened joy and confidence, but we
cease to be dependent upon feeling. At the same time, there is
nothing in Scripture to check our desire for retaining as
constantly as possible a sober gladness, for finding duty
delightful, and the ‘joy of the Lord’ our strength. These are the
truths which the one-sided and unqualified expressions of
Madame Guyon at once exaggerate and obscure.
During this dark interval M. Guyon died. His widow undertook the
formidable task of settling his disordered affairs. Her brother
gave her no assistance; her mother-in-law harassed and
hindered to her utmost; yet Madame Guyon succeeded in
arranging a chaos of papers, and bringing a hopeless imbroglio
of business matters into order, with an integrity and a skill which
excited universal admiration. She felt it was her duty; she
believed that Divine assistance was vouchsafed for its discharge.
Of business, she says, she knew as little as of Arabic; but she
knew not what she could accomplish till she tried. Minds far more
visionary than hers have evinced a still greater aptitude for
practical affairs.
The 22nd of July, 1680, is celebrated by Madame Guyon as the
happy era of her deliverance. A letter from La Combe was the
instrument of a restoration as wonderful, in her eyes, as the
bondage. This ecclesiastic had been first introduced by Madame
Guyon into the path of mystical perfection. His name is
associated with her own in the early history of the Quietist
movement. He subsequently became her Director, but was
always more her disciple than her guide. His admiration for her
amounted to a passion. Incessant persecution and long solitary
imprisonment combined, with devotional extravagance, to cloud
with insanity at last an intellect never powerful. This feeble and
affectionate soul perished, the victim of Quietism, and perhaps of
love. It should not be forgotten, that before the inward condition
of Madame Guyon changed thus remarkably for the better, her
outward circumstances had undergone a similar improvement.
She lived now in her own house, with her children about her.
That Sycorax, her mother-in-law, dropped gall no longer into her
daily cup of life. Domestic tormentors, worse than the goblins
which buffeted St. Antony, assailed her peace no more. An outer
sky grown thus serene, an air thus purified, may well have
contributed to chase away the night of the soul, and to give to a
few words of kindly counsel from La Combe the brightness of the
day-star. Our simple-hearted enthusiast was not so absolutely
indifferent as she thought herself to the changes of this transitory
world.

VIII.

Madame Guyon had now triumphantly sustained the last of those

trials, which, like the probation of the ancient mysteries, made
the porch of mystical initiation a passage terrible with pain and
peril. Henceforward, she is the finished Quietist: henceforward,
when she relates her own experience, she describes Quietism.
At times, when the children did not require her care, she would
walk out into a neighbouring wood, and there, under the shade of
the trees, amidst the singing of the birds, she now passed as
many happy hours as she had known months of sorrow. Her own
language will best indicate the thoughts which occupied this
peaceful retirement, and exhibit the principle there deepened
and matured. She says here in her Autobiography—
‘When I had lost all created supports, and even divine ones, I
then found myself happily necessitated to fall into the pure
divine, and to fall into it through all which seemed to remove me
farther from it. In losing all the gifts, with all their supports, I
found the Giver. Oh, poor creatures, who pass along all your
time in feeding on the gifts of God, and think therein to be most
favoured and happy, how I pity you if ye stop here, short of the
true rest, and cease to go forward to God, through resignation of
the same gifts! How many pass all their lives this way, and think
highly of themselves therein! There are others who, being
designed of God to die to themselves, yet pass all their time in a
dying life, and in inward agonies, without ever entering into God
through death and total loss, because they are always willing to
retain something under plausible pretexts, and so never lose self
to the whole extent of the designs of God. Wherefore, they never
enjoy God in his fulness,—a loss that will not perfectly be known
until another life.’[328]
She describes herself as having ceased from all self-originated
action and choice. To her amazement and unspeakable
happiness, it appeared as though all such natural movement
existed no longer,—a higher power had displaced and occupied
its room. ‘I even perceived no more (she continues) the soul
which He had formerly conducted by His rod and His staff,
because now He alone appeared to me, my soul having given up
its place to Him. It seemed to me as if it was wholly and
altogether passed into its God, to make but one and the same
thing with Him; even as a little drop of water cast into the sea
receives the qualities of the sea.’ She speaks of herself as now
practising the virtues no longer as virtues—that is, not by
separate and constrained efforts. It would have required effort
not to practise them.[329]
Somewhat later she expresses herself as follows:—
‘The soul passing out of itself by dying to itself necessarily
passes into its divine object. This is the law of its transition.
When it passes out of self, which is limited, and therefore is not
God, and consequently is evil, it necessarily passes into the
unlimited and universal, which is God, and therefore is the true
good. My own experience seemed to me to be a verification of
this. My spirit, disenthralled from selfishness, became united with
and lost in God, its Sovereign, who attracted it more and more to
Himself. And this was so much the case, that I could seem to
see and know God only, and not myself.... It was thus that my
soul was lost in God, who communicated to it His qualities,
having drawn it out of all that it had of its own.... O happy
poverty, happy loss, happy nothing, which gives no less than
God Himself in his own immensity,—no more circumscribed to
the limited manner of the creation, but always drawing it out of
that to plunge it wholly into His divine Essence. Then the soul
knows that all the states of self-pleasing visions, of intellectual
illuminations, of ecstasies and raptures, of whatever value they
might once have been, are now rather obstacles than
advancements; and that they are not of service in the state of
experience which is far above them; because the state which
has props or supports, which is the case with the merely
illuminated and ecstatic state, rests in them in some degree, and
has pain to lose them. But the soul cannot arrive at the state of
which I am now speaking, without the loss of all such supports
and helps.... The soul is then so submissive, and perhaps we
may say so passive,—that is to say, is so disposed equally to
receive from the hand of God either good or evil,—as is truly
astonishing. It receives both the one and the other without any
selfish emotions, letting them flow and be lost as they came.’[330]
These passages convey the substance of the doctrine which,
illustrated and expressed in various ways, pervades all the
writings of Madame Guyon. This is the principle adorned by the
fancy of her Torrents and inculcated in the practical directions of
her Short Method of Prayer. Such is the state to which Quietism
proposes to conduct its votaries. In some places, she qualifies
the strength of her expressions,—she admits that we are not at
all times equally conscious of this absolute union of the soul with
its centre,—the lower nature may not be always insensible to
distress. But the higher, the inmost element of the soul is all the
while profoundly calm, and recollection presently imparts a
similar repose to the inferior nature. When the soul has thus
passed, as she phrases it, out of the Nothing into the All, when
its feet are set in ‘a large room’ (nothing less, according to her
interpretation, than the compass of Infinity), ‘a substantial or
essential word’ is spoken there. It is a continuous word—potent,
ineffable, ever uttered without language. It is the immediate
unchecked operation of resident Deity. What it speaks, it effects.
It is blissful and mysterious as the language of heaven. With
Madame Guyon, the events of Providence are God, and the
decisions of the sanctified judgment respecting them are nothing
less than the immediate voice of God in the soul. She compares
the nature thus at rest in God to a tablet on which the divine
hand writes,—it must be held perfectly still, else the characters
traced there will be distorted or incomplete. In her very humility
she verges on the audacity which arrogates inspiration. If she,
passive and helpless, really acts no more, the impulses she
feels, her words, her actions, must all bear the impress of an
infallible divine sanction. It is easy to see that her speech and
action—always well-meant, but frequently ill-judged,—were her
own after all, though nothing of her own seemed left. She
acknowledges that she was sometimes at a loss as to the course
of duty. She was guided more than once by random passages of
the Bible, and the casual expressions of others, somewhat after
the fashion of the Sortes Virgilianæ and the omens of ancient
Rome. Her knowledge of Scripture, the native power of her
intellect, and the tenderness of her conscience, preserved her
from pushing such a view of the inward light to its worst extreme.

IX.

The admixture of error in the doctrine which Madame Guyon was

henceforward to preach with so much self-denying love, so much
intrepid constancy, appears to us to lie upon the surface. The
passages we have given convey, unquestionably, the idea of a
practical substitution of God for the soul in the case of the
perfectly sanctified. The soul within the soul is Deity. When all is
desolate, silent, the divine Majesty arises, thinks, feels, and acts,
within the transformed humanity. It is quite true that, as
sanctification progresses, Christian virtue becomes more easy
as the new habit gains strength. In many respects it is true, as
Madame Guyon says, that effort would be requisite to neglect or
violate certain duties or commands rather than to perform them.
But this facility results from the constitution of our nature. We
carry on the new economy within with less outcry, less labour,
less confusion and resistance than we did when the revolution
was recent, but we carry it on still—working with divine
assistance. God works in man, but not instead of man. It is one
thing to harmonize, in some measure, the human will with the
divine, another to substitute divine volitions for the human. Every
man has within him Conscience—the judge often bribed or
clamoured down; Will—the marshal; Imagination—the poet;
Understanding—the student; Desire—the merchant, venturing its
store of affection, and gazing out on the future in search of some
home-bound argosy of happiness. But all these powers are
found untrue to their allegiance. The ermine—the baton—the
song—the books—the merchandize, are at the service of a
usurper—Sin. When the Spirit renews the mind, there is no
massacre—no slaughterous sword filling with death the streets
of the soul’s city, and making man the ruin of his former self.
These faculties are restored to loyalty, and reinstated under God.
Then Conscience gives verdict, for the most part, according to
the divine statute-book, and is habitually obeyed. Then the lordly
Will assumes again a lowly yet noble vassalage. Then the dream
of Imagination is a dream no longer, for the reality of heaven
transcends it. Then the Understanding burns the magic books in
the market-place, and breaks the wand of its curious arts—but
studies still, for eternity as well as time. The activity of Desire
amasses still, according to its nature,—for some treasure man
must have. But the treasure is on earth no longer. It is the
advantage of such a religion that the very same laws of our
being guide our spiritual and our natural life. The same self-
controul and watchful diligence which built up the worldly habits
towards the summits of success, may be applied at once to
those habits which ripen us for heaven. The old experience will
serve. But the mystic can find no common point between himself
and other men. He is cut off from them, for he believes he has
another constitution of being, inconceivable by them—not merely
other tastes and a higher aim. The object of Christian love may
be incomprehensible, but the affection itself is not so. It is
dangerous to represent it as a mysterious and almost
unaccountable sentiment, which finds no parallel in our
experience elsewhere. Our faith in Christ, as well as our love to
Christ, are similar to our faith and love as exercised towards our
fellow-creatures. Regeneration imparts no new faculty, it gives
only a new direction to the old.

X.

Quietism opposed to the mercenary religion of the common and

consistent Romanism around it, the doctrine of disinterested
love. Revolting from the coarse machinery of a corrupt system, it
took refuge in an unnatural refinement. The love inculcated in
Scripture is equally remote from the impracticable indifference of
Quietism and the commercial principle of Superstition. Long ago,
at Alexandria, Philo endeavoured to escape from an effete and
carnal Judaism to a similar elevation. The Persian Sufis were
animated with the same ambition in reaction against the frigid
legalism of the creed of Islam. Extreme was opposed to extreme,
in like manner, when Quietism, disgusted with the unblushing
inconsistencies of nominal Christianity, proclaimed its doctrine of
perfection—of complete sanctification by faith. This is not a
principle peculiar to mysticism. It is of little practical importance.
It is difficult to see how it can be applied to individual experience.
The man who has reached such a state of purity must be the last
to know it. If we do not, by some strange confusion of thought,
identify ourselves with God, the nearer we approach Him the
more profoundly must we be conscious of our distance. As, in a
still water, we may see reflected the bird that sings in an
overhanging tree, and the bird that soars towards the zenith—the
image deepest as the ascent is highest—so it is with our
approximation to the Infinite Holiness. Madame Guyon admits
that she found it necessary jealously to guard humility, to watch
and pray—that her state was only of ‘comparative immutability.’ It
appears to us that perfection is prescribed as a goal ever to be
approached, but ever practically inaccessible. Whatever degree
of sanctification any one may have attained, it must always be
possible to conceive of a state yet more advanced,—it must
always be a duty diligently to labour towards it.
Quietist as she was, few lives have been more busy than that of
Madame Guyon with the activities of an indefatigable
benevolence. It was only self-originated action which she strove
to annihilate. In her case, especially, Quietism contained a
reformatory principle. Genuflexions and crossings were of little
value in comparison with inward abasement and crucifixion. The
prayers repeated by rote in the oratory, were immeasurably
inferior to that Prayer of Silence she so strongly commends—
that prayer which, unlimited to times and seasons, unhindered by
words, is a state rather than an act, a sentiment rather than a
request,—a continuous sense of submission, which breathes,
moment by moment, from the serene depth of the soul, ‘Thy will
be done.’[331]
As contrasted with the mysticism of St. Theresa, that of Madame
Guyon appears to great advantage. She guards her readers
against attempting to form any image of God. She aspires to an
intellectual elevation—a spiritual intuition, above the sensuous
region of theurgy, of visions, and of dreams. She saw no Jesuits
in heaven bearing white banners among the heavenly throng of
the redeemed. She beheld no Devil, ‘like a little negro,’ sitting on
her breviary. She did not see the Saviour in an ecstasy, drawing
the nail out of His hand. She felt no large white dove fluttering
above her head. But she did not spend her days in founding
convents—a slave to the interests of the clergy. So they made a
saint of Theresa, and a confessor of Madame Guyon.

XI.
In the summer of 1681, Madame Guyon, now thirty-four years of
age, quitted Paris for Gex, a town lying at the foot of the Jura,
about twelve miles from Geneva. It was arranged that she should
take some part in the foundation and management of a new
religious and charitable institution there. A period of five years
was destined to elapse before her return to the capital. During
this interval, she resided successively at Gex, Thonon, Turin,
and Grenoble. Wherever she went, she was indefatigable in
works of charity, and also in the diffusion of her peculiar
doctrines concerning self-abandonment and disinterested love.
Strong in the persuasion of her mission, she could not rest
without endeavouring to influence the minds around her. The
singular charm of her conversation won a speedy ascendency
over nearly all with whom she came in contact. It is easy to see
how a remarkable natural gift in this direction contributed both to
the attempt and the success. But the Quietest had buried nature,
and to nature she would owe nothing,—these conversational
powers could be, in her eyes, only a special gift of utterance from
above. This mistake reminds us of the story of certain monks
upon whose cloister garden the snow never lay, though all the
country round was buried in the rigour of a northern winter. The
marvellous exemption, long attributed by superstition to miracle,
was discovered to arise simply from certain thermal springs
which had their source within the sacred inclosure. It is thus that
the warmth and vivacity of natural temperament has been
commonly regarded by the mystic, as nothing less than a fiery
impartation from the altar of the celestial temple.
At Thonon her apartment was visited by a succession of
applicants from every class, who laid bare their hearts before
her, and sought from her lips spiritual guidance or consolation.
She met them separately and in groups, for conference and for
prayer. At Grenoble, she says she was for some time engaged
from six o’clock in the morning till eight at evening in speaking of
God to all sorts of persons,—‘friars, priests, men of the world,
maids, wives, widows, all came, one after another, to hear what I
had to say.’[332] Her efforts among the members of the House of
the Novitiates in that city, were eminently successful, and she
appears to have been of real service to many who had sought
peace in vain, by the austerities and the routine of monastic
seclusion. Meanwhile, she was active, both at Thonon and
Grenoble, in the establishment of hospitals. She carried on a
large and continually increasing correspondence. In the former
place she wrote her Torrents, in the latter, she published her
Short Method of Prayer, and commenced her Commentaries on
the Bible.[333]
But alas! all this earnest, tireless toil is unauthorized. Bigotry
takes the alarm, and cries the Church is in danger. Priests who
were asleep—priests who were place-hunting—priests who were
pleasure-hunting, awoke from their doze, or drew breath in their
chase, to observe this woman whose life rebuked them—to
observe and to assail her; for rebuke, in their terminology, was
scandal. Persecution hemmed her in on every side; no
annoyance was too petty, no calumny too gross, for priestly
jealousy. The inmates of the religious community she had
enriched were taught to insult her—tricks were devised to
frighten her by horrible appearances and unearthly noises—her
windows were broken—her letters were intercepted. Thus,
before a year had elapsed, she was driven from Gex. Some
called her a sorceress; others, more malignant yet, stigmatized
her as half a Protestant. She had indeed recommended the
reading of the Scriptures to all, and spoken slightingly of mere
bowing and bead-counting. Monstrous contumacy—said, with
one voice, spiritual slaves and spiritual slave-owners—that a
woman desired by her bishop to do one thing, should discover
an inward call to do another. At Thonon the priests burnt in the
public square all the books they could find treating of the inner
life, and went home elated with their performance. One thought
may have embittered their triumph—had it only been living flesh
instead of mere paper! She inhabited a poor cottage that stood
by itself in the fields, at some distance from Thonon. Attached to
it was a little garden, in the management of which she took
pleasure. One night a rabble from the town were incited to terrify
her with their drunken riot,—they trampled down and laid waste
the garden, hurled stones in at the windows, and shouted their
 threats, insults, and curses, round the house the whole night.
Then came an episcopal order to quit the diocese. When
compelled subsequently, by the opposition she encountered, to
withdraw secretly from Grenoble, she was advised to take refuge
at Marseilles. She arrived in that city at ten o’clock in the
morning, but that very afternoon all was in uproar against her, so
vigilant and implacable were her enemies.

Note to page 214.

Autobiography, chapp. viii. and x. In describing her state of mind at

this time, she says,—‘This immersion in God immerged all things. I
could no more see the saints, nor even the blessed Virgin, out of
God; but I beheld them all in Him. And though I tenderly loved
certain saints, as St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Mary Magdalen, St.
Theresa, with all those who were spiritual, yet I could not form to
myself images of them, nor invoke any of them out of God.’ Here a
genuine religious fervour, described in the language of mystical
theology, has overcome superstition, and placed her, unconsciously,
in a position similar to that of Molinos with regard to these
professedly subordinate objects of Romanist worship. It may be
observed, in passing, that while Rome pretends to subordinate saint-
worship, she denounces those of her children who really do so, as
heretical, i.e., reformatory, in their tendency.
Madame Guyon was enabled at this period to enjoy a habitual
inward prayer,—‘a prayer of rejoicing and possession, wherein the
taste of God was so great, so pure, unblended, and uninterrupted,
that it drew and absorbed the powers of the soul into a profound
recollection, without act or discourse. For I had now no sight but of
Jesus Christ alone. All else was excluded, in order to love with the
greater extent, without any selfish motives or reasons for loving.’
With much good sense, she declares this continual and immediate
sense of the Divine presence far safer and higher than the sensible
relish of ecstasies and ravishments,—than distinct interior words or
revelations of things to come,—so often imaginary, so apt to divert
our desires from the Giver to the gifts;—this is the revelation of
Jesus Christ, which makes us new creatures, the manifestation of
the Word within us, who cannot deceive,—the life of true and naked
faith, which darkens all self-pleasing lights, and reveals the minutest
faults, that pure love may reign in the centre of the soul. Thus, while
inheriting the phraseology of the mystics (and we discern in these
accounts of her early experience the influence of her later readings
in mystical theology), she is less sensuous than Theresa, less
artificial than John. Like the latter, she assigns to love the office of
annihilating the will, to faith that of absorbing the understanding, ‘so
as to make it decline all reasonings, all particular brightnesses and
illustrations.’ The Annihilation of the Will, or the Union in the Will of
God, consists, with her, simply in a state of complete docility, the
soul yielding itself up to be emptied of all which is its own, till it finds
itself by little and little detached from every self-originated motion,
and placed ‘in a holy indifference for willing;—wishing nothing but
what God does and wills.’—P. 70.

Note to page 218.

She describes herself, when at Thonon, as causing sundry devils to

withdraw with a word. But the said devils, like some other sights and
sounds which terrified her there, were probably the contrivance of
the monks who persecuted her, with whom expertness in such tricks
was doubtless reckoned among the accomplishments of sanctity.
When at the same place (she was then a little past thirty), Madame
Guyon believed that a certain virtue was vouchsafed her—a gift of
spiritual and sometimes of bodily healing, dependent, however, for
its successful operation, on the degree of susceptibility in the
recipients.—Autobiography, part II. c. xii.
There also she underwent some of her most painful and mysterious
experiences with regard to Father La Combe. She says,—‘Our Lord
gave me, with the weaknesses of a child, such a power over souls,
that with a word I put them in pain or in peace, as was necessary for
their good. I saw that God made Himself to be obeyed, in and
through me, like an absolute Sovereign. I neither resisted Him nor
took part in anything.... Our Lord had given us both (herself and La
Combe) to understand that He would unite us by faith and by the
cross. Ours, then, has been a union of the cross in every respect, as
well as by what I have made him suffer, as by what I have suffered
for him.... The sufferings which I have had on his account were such
as to reduce me sometimes to extremity, which continued for several
years. For though I have been much more of my time far from him
than near him, that did not relieve my suffering, which continued till
he was perfectly emptied of himself, and to the very point of
submission which God required of him.... He hath occasioned me
cruel pains when I was near a hundred leagues from him. I felt his
disposition. If he was faithful in letting Self be destroyed, I was in a
state of peace and enlargement. If he was unfaithful in reflection or
hesitation, I suffered till that was passed over. He had no need to
write me an account of his condition, for I knew it; but when he did
write, it proved to be such as I had felt it.’—Ibid. p. 51.
She says that frequently, when Father La Combe came to confess
her, she could not speak a word to him; she felt take place within her
the same silence toward him, which she had experienced in regard
to God. I understood, she adds, that God wished to teach me that
the language of angels might be learnt by men on earth,—that is,
converse without words. She was gradually reduced to this wordless
communication alone, in her interviews with La Combe; and they
imagined that they understood each other, ‘in a manner ineffable and
divine.’ She regarded the use of speech, or of the pen, as a kind of
accommodation on her part to the weakness of souls not sufficiently
advanced for these internal communications.
Here Madame Guyon anticipates the Quakers. Compare Barclay’s
Apology, Prop. xi. §§ 6, 7.
Shortly after her arrival in Paris, she describes herself as favoured,
from the plenitude which filled her soul, with ‘a discharge on her
best-disposed children to their mutual joy and comfort, and not only
when present, but sometimes when absent.’ ‘I even felt it,’ she adds,
‘to flow from me into their souls. When they wrote to me, they
informed me that at such times they had received abundant infusions
of divine grace.’—Ibid. part III. c. i.

Note to page 223.

Autobiography, part I. c. xiii. Here Madame Guyon has found

confessors blind guides, and confessions profitless; and furthermore,
she is encouraged and instructed in the inward life by a despised
layman. There is every reason to believe that the experience of
Madame Guyon, and the doctrines of the beggar, were shared to
some extent by many more. Madame Guyon speaks as Theresa
does of the internal pains of the soul as equivalent to those of
purgatory. (c. xi.) The teaching of the quondam mendicant
concerning an internal and present instead of a future purgatory, was
not in itself contrary to the declarations of orthodox mysticism. But
many were beginning to seek in this perfectionist doctrine a refuge
from the exactions of the priesthood. With creatures of the clergy like
Theresa, or with monks like John of the Cross, such a tenet would
be retained within the limits required by the ecclesiastical interest. It
might stimulate religious zeal—it would never intercept religious
obedience. But it was not always so among the people—it was not
so with many of the followers of Molinos. The jealous vigilance of
priestcraft saw that it had everything to fear from a current belief
among the laity, that a state of spiritual perfection, rendering
purgatory needless, was of possible attainment—might be reached
by secret self-sacrifice, in the use of very simple means. If such a
notion prevailed, the lucrative traffic of indulgences might totter on
the verge of bankruptcy. No devotee would impoverish himself to buy
exemption hereafter from a purifying process which he believed
himself now experiencing, in the hourly sorrows he patiently
endured. It was at least possible—it had been known to happen, that
the soul which struggled to escape itself—to rise beyond the gifts of
God, to God—to ascend, beyond words and means, to repose in
Him,—which desired only the Divine will, feared only the Divine
displeasure,—which sought to ignore so utterly its own capacity and
power, might come to attach paramount importance no longer to the